


Exactly Like You

by LaBelleIzzy



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Cooking, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Future Fic, Happy Kent Parson, M/M, Team as Family, cooking magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 10:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14932802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaBelleIzzy/pseuds/LaBelleIzzy
Summary: in which, Kent V Parson is an ENORMOUS sap. But quietly, inside his head, because he knows being all possessive and shit is not Healthy Relationship Goals and he is trying for that. Eric is worth trying for.





	Exactly Like You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piehead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piehead/gifts).



> In which your author has finally succumbed to the trend of going to song lyrics for titles. 
> 
> Lovely duet with k.d. lang and Tony Bennett here:
> 
> https://youtu.be/owIsE2JCtYs
> 
> Piehead prompted:  
> Just Bitty and Kent living their domestic lives in Vegas! Being generally loving towards each other. Preferable if Jack isn’t involved beyond being maybe a supportive friend. Nothing abusive, no hardcore angst pls.
> 
> Thanks to DizzyRedhead for brainstorming on titles with me and drat her because now I wanna write a new Zimbits fic using the song SHE suggested for a title... ARGH. :) Love you anyway, babe.

Kent walks into the kitchen where Eric has been gently warming chocolate on the stove, and leans against the doorframe. Eric is tidily dressed, for working in the kitchen, but they’re meant to go out to a team potluck later tonight, and Eric wanted to do a quick dessert. 

“Hey, babe,” Kent calls from the doorway. “Is this meant to be quicker than your usual ‘magic was involved in the making of this pie’, or what?”

Eric pivots, smiling over his shoulder. “Hey sugar pie,” and continues stirring chocolate in between slicing chunks of fruit piled up on the countertop.

Kent saunters over slow enough to know that Eric is aware of what he’s doing. He cuddles up behind Eric and slides his hands around his low belly, hooking his chin over Eric’s shoulder. Eric gives him a chin-hug, the kind of hug you do between your shoulder and your chin when that’s all you can reach of your person.

Kent still doesn’t understand how lucky he’s gotten that Eric chose HIM. 35 is a good year for him, as 30 has been good for Eric.

His PERSON.

Kent loves thinking that, though he thinks that it makes him sound like a cat, or maybe a dragon… HIS person.

Kent pulls back far enough to drop a light kiss on the back of Eric’s neck, and thinks, very loudly, MINE. Because he’s heard enough transplanted monologues from Shitty B. Knight and from Eric’s Sociology 152 professors, that possessive behavior and language is not generally considered the hallmark of a healthy romantic relationship…

And Kent GETS that, he does. But he can’t quite stop himself from snugging his arms just a little tighter around Eric Bittle’s hips, while he enjoys the warm chocolate and tart fruit aromas in the air of THEIR kitchen, while Eric wears the apron KENT got him, had MADE for him specially at Zazzle.

“Honey, you got to turn me loose a minute so we can get these chocolate dipped while the chocolate is just warm enough.” Eric turns slowly in his arms, to give Kent a slow sweet kiss. His hands stay in the air, still covered in fruit juices from the cutting board. 

“Mmmm,” Kent hums, “You’ve been taste testing the chocolate again, haven’t you?”

“Well of course I have, sugar pie, how else am I s’posed to know it tastes right for the job?” Eric winks and hip-checks him, sneaking one more little peck at the corner of Kent’s mouth as he wiggles past to take the chocolate off the double boiler.

Kent watches with huge fondness as Eric brings the fondue forks out and starts the assembly line so they can both dip fruit in chocolate and lay the chunks out on the parchment paper.

Eric’s wearing the apron Kent got for him last winter. It’s Aces colors, and in the font they use for “Las Vegas Aces” it says “Ace of Hearts”, with a giant Samwell red heart in the center. 

Eric laughed his guts out when Kent gave it to him, and Kent knows that he himself had complete heart eyes on the entire time. He'd called Kent a cornball and a sentimental possessive fool and quite a few other silly and not inaccurate names, when he opened that present.

The apron has held up through several months of floury handprints, chocolate smudges, fruit sugar stains and other crunchy, gross, delicious, and highly staining substances. It’s only been seven months since Kent gave it to him, but Eric wears it almost every time they cook together, which is pretty much daily. 

This makes Kent feel smugly satisfied.

Kent joins Eric at the kitchen island without any kind of smart alec or smug commentary, and he really feels like he deserves some kind of medal for self restraint. 

He’s dating Eric Bittle, who cooks for him and calls him ridiculous pastry-based nicknames during the day, and who lets Kent love him up and cuddle him close during most nights. 

Life with Eric in it is much richer and more delicious than life alone was. Too many years Kent was functionally alone, and hookups on the road don’t do a lot to dispel loneliness, though they help a little bit with hormone levels and skin hunger.

But it’s an entirely different ballgame, as Eric’s dad would perhaps say, to have someone reliably in your home, in your space, who you can walk up to and lean on whenever they are around, or pull them into your lap on the couch while you both watch The Real Housewives or the Great British Bakeoff, again. Someone who you can kiss them behind the ear because you know from experience they are ticklish and will blush when you do it.

It’s not SEX, it’s INTIMACY. You can have sex with a one time hookup. You can *maybe* find intimacy, depending, but it’s not a longstanding kind of intimacy. You can fling yourself into a short and torrid weekend affair, but it’s not the same as slowly getting to know someone, slowly developing trust and an understanding of each other’s habits. Sex isn't the same as learning how to relax around another person. It’s not the same as welcoming and including each other into your spaces and personal lives.

This with Eric? THIS is intimacy. 

Kent grins into Eric’s shoulder. Well. It’s sex too, pretty often, and pretty satisfyingly so.

Eric swats him on the butt with the handle of the fondue fork as a means of encouraging Kent to quit being distracted and get to making their potluck item of chocolate dipped fruit and berries.

They work together, swaying gently to the hypnotic beat of the music on the kitchen speakers, and in their flow state they finish dipping and laying out all the berries and cut fruit onto the parchment paper. Kent’s surprised at how quickly it goes, maybe fifteen minutes total before they're washing the fruit bowl, cutting board, and knives. Then they’re scraping the leftover chocolate into a tiny prep bowl and putting it in the fridge. Kent thinks, hopefully, of later snacking.

Kent slots the cutting board into the dish drainer while Eric arranges the fruit in pretty patterns onto the serving tray they’re taking to the potluck. The tray says “Parson” on the underside in Sharpie, but Kent is quietly starting to hope that someday his housewares will have a hyphenated name on the underside.

It’s early days yet though. Eric and he don’t live together yet, and that feels like the next logical step. And even Kent knows that asking Eric to move in next month as his birthday present would be way, WAY over the top. 

Way too much to ask.

It’s way too soon. 

But he has thought about asking, and this comfort level, the two of them moving effortlessly together around the kitchen, is a big part of why.

He’s never asked a partner to live with him, mostly because, well, he wasn’t out before. Now that he is out, along with dozens of other players, current and retired? It’s not that big a deal. 

Well. Certainly not like it once was…

And having Eric around would be worth it. So worth it.

But for today, it’s enough, it’s MORE than enough, to have Eric around here and now, enough to go with him to the team potluck. Enough to have him in Kent’s kitchen, turning around to say, “Looks like we’re about finished up in here, sugar pie. I’m gonna just go freshen up a bit and then I’m ready to head over to Swoops’s place.”

All Kent can do is grin a little helplessly and say, “I’m ready when you are, babe. Thanks for getting us all organized like you did here.”

Eric grins back and says, “You *did* help, sweetheart…” and is on the way out of the kitchen when he tosses over his shoulder, “Well, you did help AFTER I poked you with the fondue fork!”

Kent rolls his eyes. “Yeah babe, thanks for that reminder.”

“Two shakes of a lamb’s tail, sweetheart!”

Kent packs the fruit tray up into the carrying case and tucks the plastic wrap firmly around the edges.

At the door he slips into his shoes and also into a sweet daydream where he’d have the right to look forward to this kind of thing with Eric every single day of the week.

And if his smile is even sappier than usual when Eric comes out of the bedroom “all gussied up”, as he might say, Eric doesn't chirp Kent at all. He smiles sweet and lopsided at Kent while he slips his own shoes on, and holds the door open so Kent can carry the potluck tray through.

Yeah, Kent thinks, nodding. Kinda just exactly like this.


End file.
